SPE-170155-MS

Improvement of Sweep Efficiency of Miscible Displacement Processes in

Heterogeneous Porous Media
M. Sajjadi and J. Azaiez, University of Calgary

Copyright 2014, Society of Petroleum Engineers

This paper was prepared for presentation at the SPE Heavy Oil Conference-Canada held in Alberta, Canada, 10 12 June 2014.
This paper was selected for presentation by an SPE program committee following review of information contained in an abstract submitted by the author(s). Contents
of the paper have not been reviewed by the Society of Petroleum Engineers and are subject to correction by the author(s). The material does not necessarily reflect
any position of the Society of Petroleum Engineers, its officers, or members. Electronic reproduction, distribution, or storage of any part of this paper without the written
consent of the Society of Petroleum Engineers is prohibited. Permission to reproduce in print is restricted to an abstract of not more than 300 words; illustrations may
not be copied. The abstract must contain conspicuous acknowledgment of SPE copyright.

Abstract
The viscous fingering phenomenon in displacement processes develops due to higher mobility of the
injected fluid compared to that of the inhabitant fluid. It causes early breakthrough of the injected fluid
and results in reduced sweep efficiency of the process. In addition to viscous fingering, heterogeneity of the
porous medium can be a source of instability in displacement processes which has significant interactions with
the viscous forces. The coupling between viscous fingering and heterogeneity induced channeling has been
deemed to enhance the instabilities by increasing the growth rate of fingers formed inside the high permeable
channels. This conclusion is questioned by the present work which investigates the effect of the injection
velocity, diffusion coefficient, and width of the layers in a layered medium, on the coupling between the two
named sources of instability. Numerical simulations and quantitative analysis of the instabilities show that the
flow in heterogeneous media goes through four different regimes (initial diffusion, channeling, lateral dispersion, and viscous fingering) each dominated by a different flow mechanism that results in different growth rates
of fingers. Based on these characterizations a method is suggested to design the process with an optimum
injection rate such that the coupling between viscous fingering and heterogeneity attenuates the instability and
results in improved sweep efficiency. Finding the optimum displacement parameters and improving the
efficiency of the process helps to reduce the amount of solvent to be injected in the medium and therefore
decreases the environmental effects of the recovery process.

Introduction
Displacement of hydrocarbons in heterogeneous reservoirs has always been a challenge since heterogeneity induced instabilities (channeling of the injected fluid in the high permeability paths) result in a
reduction of the sweep efficiency of the process. These instabilities are encountered in many oil recovery
applications such as water flooding, solvent flooding and air injection processes as well as in other
applications such as CO2 sequestration, aquifer remediation, and packed bed regeneration. Therefore
many experimental and statistical studies and numerical simulations have been devoted to the analysis of
the flow behavior in heterogeneous media (e.g. Warren and Price 1961 and Siddiqui and Sahimi 1990).
Such studies show that the instabilities on the displacement front are not always dominated by heterogeneity and sometimes other sources of instability like viscous fingering are the main mechanisms driving
the fingers (Araktingi and Orr 1988). Therefore determination of criteria for the possible dominance of

SPE-170155-MS

viscous fingering or channeling mechanisms has been the aim of many efforts that characterized the
heterogeneity with a single parameter such as the Dykstra-Parsons coefficient VDP or Lorenz coefficient
LC in stratified reservoirs (Jensen and Lake 1988). In 1963 Koval proposed a scheme for the measurement
of the effects of heterogeneity and viscous forces on sweep efficiency in miscible displacement processes
(Koval 1963) but it was based on a 1D study and did not represent the effect of heterogeneity for
correlated permeability distribution (Araktingi and Orr 1988).
Among the numerical studies on simulation of miscible displacements in heterogeneous media there
have been two main approaches. The first approach taken by Araktingi and Orr in 1988 (Araktingi and
Orr 1988) was based on particle tracking method for the simulation of growing fingers in stochastically
developed heterogeneous media with log-normal permeability distribution. Based on their simulations
results Araktingi and Orr defined a heterogeneity index HI for the characterization of the permeability
field and for the determination of the dominance of viscous fingering or channeling in the medium using
the variance and correlation length of the permeability distribution. Their simulations showed that the
growth rate of instabilities increases with the increase of any of the variance or the correlation length of
permeability distribution. Araktingi and Orr later added the effect of gravity segregation and studied the effect
of the arrangement of heterogeneity layers on instabilities using the same method (Araktingi and Orr 1990) and
found an optimum arrangement for every range of viscous forces to gravity ratio. Tchelepi and Orr (Tchelepi
and Orr 1994) looked at the same problem in a 3D model using the particle tracking approach and found that
the effect of gravity segregation becomes more important when the heterogeneity has a higher correlation
length and that the effect of gravity is more pronounced in 3D models than in 2D models.
The second approach was based on the work by Tan and Homsy in 1992 which used spectral methods for
solving the model in a stationary random permeability distribution (Tan and Homsy 1992). Tan and Homsy
found that the growth rate of fingers increases with the variance of the permeability but has a nonmonotonic
behavior as the correlation length of the heterogeneity was changed. In 1997 De Wit and Homsy looked at this
problem more systematically and tried to find a correlation between the length scale of heterogeneity and that
of viscous fingering instabilities through stability analysis and numerical simulation of miscible displacements
in periodically varying permeability fields (De Wit and Homsy 1997). This work and similar ones adopting Tan
and Homsys approach focused on describing the non-monotonic trend of growth of fingers with length scale
of heterogeneity. This behavios was associated with a resonance between the two mechanisms of instability
which was deemed to happen in media where the length scale of heterogeneities and that of viscous fingering
were commensurate (Tan and Homsy 1990, De Wit and Homsy 1997, Riaz and Meiburg 1993, Chen and
Meiburg 1998). In 2013 Sajjadi and Azaiez (Sajjadi and Azaiez 2013) performed more extensive studies on
miscible flow in periodically layered media using the same method and showed that the non-monotonic
behavior is due to a change of the flow regime as the front progresses in the heterogeneous medium. Based on
their investigations, the length scale of heterogeneity at which resonance happened was time dependent and
did not necessarily correlate with the length scale of fingers.
For two phase flow instabilities in heterogeneous media different approaches have also been proposed
like the Quintard and Whitakers method of large-scale averaging (Quintard and Whitaker) and the works
by Ferer (Ferer 2006, Ferer and Smith 1994) based on fractal nature of viscous fingering in pore level. In
2003 Furtado and Pereira looked at the two-phase flow problem in heterogeneous media and distinguished
different asymptotic regimes for the flow when changing the variance of permeability and the mobility
ratio (Furtado and Pereira 2003). Their findings including dominance of viscous forces for high mobility
ratio and low heterogeneity variance scenarios are in agreement with Sajjadi and Azaiezs characterization
of flow regimes but Furtado and Pereira only looked at the asymptotic behavior and did not recognize the
details of the development of these regimes during the displacement process.
In this work the effect of flow parameters on breakthrough time and sweep efficiency of a viscously
unstable miscible displacement in a layered medium is studied. Based on the flow characteristics in

SPE-170155-MS

heterogeneous media, a scheme is proposed to predict the breakthrough time of any process and to
optimize its efficiency.

Modeling of Miscible Displacements in Layered Media

The miscible displacement of an inhabitant fluid (fluid 1) by the injection of another fluid (fluid 2) in a
rectilinear layered heterogeneous porous medium is of interest. The injection is performed at a constant
and uniform rate across the upstream injection area. The modeling involves solving the continuity
equation, Darcys equation for conservation of momentum, and convection-diffusion equation for concentration. A spectral method was used for the transformation of the equations in space and a semiimplicit time stepping algorithm (Adams-Bashforth fourth order predictor-corrector) for advancing of the
solutions in time. Details about the modeling can be found in (Sajjadi and Azaiez 2013).
(1)
(2)
(3)
The heterogeneous porous medium is modelled as a periodically layered medium with variation of
permeability across the flow direction as ln(k) s cos(2 nyy/Ly) (De Wit and Homsy 1997). The
viscosity of the fluid is assumed to have an exponential relation with the solvent concentration (x, y)
1 exp(R(1 C(x, y)/C1)) (Tan and Homsy 1992). The heterogeneity of the medium causes any
disturbance at the concentration front to grow as fingers of injected fluid into the inhabitant one. If the
viscosity ratio at the front is larger than one (i.e. M 2/1 eR 1 or R 0), then the flow is viscously
unstable and viscous forces tend to increase the growth of instabilities. But as will be shown in the next
section, these two instability mechanisms do not always enhance each other.

Flow Regimes in Layered Media

In a previous study on miscible displacements in layered porous media, four regimes were recognized
which are believed to appear consequently in the process, if given enough time, regardless of the flow
parameters or the degree of heterogeneity in the medium (Sajjadi and Azaiez 2013). These flow regimes
are initial diffusion, channeling, lateral dispersion, and viscous fingering. In the initial diffusion regime
the instabilities have not formed and the flow goes through a stable diffusion phase. The period of initial
diffusion is relatively smaller than the other regimes and lasts longer if the effect of the viscous forces and
heterogeneity are weakened. The flow behavior going through the other regimes is illustrated in the 2D
plots of concentration contours in Figure 1. This figure shows simulation results for three viscously
unstable scenarios with different injection velocities in a ten layer medium. In all of the scenarios: M
20, s ln(kmax/kave) 0.1 and the other flow parameters are given in Table 1 for cases 1 to 3. The only
parameter changing in between these cases is the flow injection velocity which is increased from U 5e
6 m/s in case 1 to U 20e 6 m/s in case 3. It is observed that at first the instabilities develop inside
the high permeable channels (channeling) and as they grow they start to get diffused across the channels
(lateral dispersion). After lateral dispersion new instabilities not following the heterogeneity develop on
the front (viscous fingering). All three scenarios go through these regimes although the transition between
these regimes may occur sooner or later depending on the flow conditions. By increase of the injection
velocity the length of the chandelled fingers increases and forms a thicker front when going through lateral
dispersion regime and slower injection rates result in later formation of viscous fingers.
One of the quantitative measures of the growth of instabilities is the distance between two ends of the
mixing zone with average concentrations of 0.01 and 0.99 which is plotted for the previously discussed

SPE-170155-MS

Figure 1Different flow regimes observed through concentration profiles C(x, y)/C1 of a viscously unstable displacement with M 20, s 0.1, Ly
256 m in a 10-layer medium for injection velocities of a) 5e 6 m/s, b) 10e 6 m/s, c) 20e 6 m/s; the frames are 512256 m2 and only capture
the front rather than its advancement in the medium; the times indicated on each frame is in days.
Table 1Flow conditions for the described displacement scenarios and the corresponding breakthrough time, weep efficiency at breakthrough
and optimum well spacing for each scenario.
Case Number
1
2
3
4
5

U (m/s)

w (m)

Dc (m2/s)

SE at BT

tBT (days)

lopt (m)

5e-6
10e-6
20e-6
20e-6
5e-3

25.6
25.6
25.6
25.6
0.0256

5e-6
5e-6
5e-6
1e-5
1e-6

0.897
0.976
0.969
0.976

1005.1
508.0
219.7
253.99

65450
120650
2501100
120650
0.251.65

Figure 2Quantitative description of the displacement front behavior through analysis of time variation of a) MZL, b) EP position, c) Sweep
Efficiency; breakthrough of each case is marked as a solid circle on its curve.

three scenarios in Figure 2a. These plots show that the mixing zone length (MZL) has a larger slope in
the channeling and viscous fingering regimes compared to that during the lateral dispersion regime.
Although MZL graphs are useful for the detection of the flow regimes throughout the process, they only
represent the advancement of the solvent concentration due to growth of fingers and not the fronts
movement. Therefore in order to be able to follow the fronts position in time the end point (EP) is
defined as the farthest point along the flow direction with an average concentration of Cave 0.01.
The plots of EP versus time in Figure 2b do not show much sensitivity to changes of flow regimes
but are useful in the determination of the breakthrough time as at this time the end point reaches the
production end (xEP l).

SPE-170155-MS

Figure 3Unified curves after scaling the length and time using the diffusive scaling for a) MZL, b) EP position and c) sweep efficiency with respect
to scaled time.

Effect of injection velocity on breakthrough time and sweep efficiency

Breakthrough time tBT and sweep efficiency (SE) at breakthrough are the main factors that define the
success of a displacement process. In this work it is assumed that the breakthrough happens when the
solvent concentration in the production well reaches a volume fraction of 0.01. So tBT is the time at which
the end point (EP) of the mixing zone reaches the production well. Sweep efficiency here is defined as
the ratio of the area with solvent concentration of Cave 0.01 to the rectangular area of Ly xEP.
The breakthrough time values for each of the injection velocities are given in Table 1. The fact that
higher injection rate results in earlier breakthrough of the solvent, if not trivial, is expected but it does not
imply that a lower injection rate necessarily results in a higher efficiency of the process. In fact the
calculated values of the sweep efficiency of these processes show a better performance for case 2 with the
injection rate of U 10e 6 m/s. The sweep efficiency of a displacement process is significantly affected
by the instabilities and therefore is correlated with the flow regime in heterogeneous media. Due to the
growth of fingers in the channeling regime the flow has lower sweep efficiency in this regime and the
efficiency improves as lateral dispersion develops. By the start of viscous fingering the sweep efficiency
drops again. Figure 2c shows the variations of the sweep efficiency of the discussed scenarios with time
and the breakthrough time of each of the processes are marked on them as well as on the MZL curves in
Figure 2a. It is apparent that because the breakthrough of case 1 with U 5e 6 m/s occurs during the
viscous fingering period, its efficiency is lower than the other two cases whose breakthrough times are
during the lateral dispersion period. So, slower injection of the solvent in this case reduces both the rate
of production and the recovery.

Scaling and Generalization

Finding the optimum injection rate with high sweep efficiency and fast production through the discussed
scheme requires a method to predict the position of EP in time. In a previous work (Sajjadi and Azaiez
2013) the authors showed that the flow in channeling and lateral dispersion regimes has a diffusive
behavior and the size of mixing zone in different scenarios grows in similar trends which could be scaled
to get a generalized curve. Based on this diffusive behavior, the data used to plot the curves in Figure 2a
and b are scaled as x/(w2U / DC) and plotted in Figure 3a and b with respect to a scaled time t
/(w2 / DC). To examine the application of scaling for various diffusion coefficients and widths of the layers
two new scenarios are introduced (cases 4 and 5) in Table 1 and the scaled MZL and EP position are also
presented in Figures 3a and b. Case 4 has a higher diffusion rate of DC 1e 5 m2/s but otherwise is
similar to case 3. Case 5 has smaller dimensions which could correspond to an experimental setup. The
width of the layers is 2.56 cm and the diffusion rate and injection velocity are larger than the ones in cases
1 to 3. Despite the vast difference in size between the different scenarios, the scaling of MZL and EP
position matches all the scenarios together. It is also interesting to note that cases 2 and 4 have the same

SPE-170155-MS

w2U / DC which means that the fronts in these two cases look similar at the same position. This explains
why they show the same sweep efficiency at the breakthrough time while reaching it at different times as
case 4 has an injection velocity double that of case 2.
These unified curves can be obtained from test results or experimental data of different sizes and can
be scaled back to the units of interest for any scenario as long as the mobility ratio and variance of
heterogeneity are kept the same. Another limitation is that since the dynamics of the flow in viscous
fingering regime is dominated by advection rather than diffusion, unification of the curves is only valid
up to the start of viscous fingering in the process. So it is not possible to predict the time at which viscous
fingering starts. Breakthrough time can be calculated from the generalized curves by setting EP l
/(w2U / DC) and adjusting the parameters that could be changed like injection rate or the distance between
the production and injection wells such that the breakthrough happens in lateral dispersion regime.
Since the scaling of different scenarios in time synchronizes their flow regimes, plotting the sweep
efficiency curves of these scenarios with respect to the scaled time makes them to fall together as the flows
go through the channeling regime and rise again as the flows go through the lateral dispersion regime.
Such curves are useful for a direct determination of the optimum injection rate or well spacing for a
displacement process design based on the highest sweep efficiency. For example for the scenario of case
1 this graph shows that if breakthrough happens between scaled times of 0.1 and 0.5 then the process
would have an improved sweep efficiency compared to the original scenario. These scaled time values on
scaled EP plot in Figure 3b refers to a scaled EP position of 0.2 to 0.6. This means that the optimum well
spacing for case 1 would be between 65 to 450 m. The optimum well spacing values for other scenarios
are calculated similarly and are given in Table 1.

Summary and Conclusion

In this paper a practical scheme is proposed for the design of optimum miscible displacements for given
heterogeneity of the reservoir and mobility ratio. The scheme is based on the development of flow regimes
in heterogeneous porous media which changes the sweep efficiency of the displacement in time. By
generating scaled EP and MZL graphs based on one experiment with the same mobility ratio and
heterogeneity variance as in the real application, one can determine the optimum flow conditions by
choosing a breakthrough time in the lateral dispersion regime and back scaling the EP position of the
chosen point to get the optimum injection velocity or well spacing depending on the fixed parameters.

Nomenclature

Symbol
C
C1
Dc
M
L x, L y
R
U
k
I
nv
p
s
t

Description
Volume concentration
Solvent concentration at the entrance
Diffusion coefficient (m2/s)
Mobility ratio
Length and Width of the domain respectively (m)
Log-viscosity ratio
Injection Darcy velocity (m/s)
Permeability (m2)
Distance between the injection and production wells (m)
Number of heterogeneity layers
Pressure (Pa)
Log-variance of heterogeneity
Time (days)
Scaled time with respect to diffusive scaling

SPE-170155-MS

tBT
w
x, y
xEP

1, 2

Breakthrough time (days)

Darcy velocity vector (m/s)
Width of the heterogeneity layers (m)
Coordinates of the system along the flow and across the flow directions respectively (m)
Scaled length with respect to diffusive scaling
Position of the end point of the front (m)
Viscosity (Pa.s)
Viscosity of the injected and the inhabitant fluids respectively (Pa.s)

References
Araktingi, U. G., and Orr, Jr., F. M. 1988. Viscous fingering in heterogeneous porous media. Society
of Petroleum Engineers of AIME GAMMA: 421434.
Araktingi, U. G., and Orr, Jr., F. M. 1990. Viscous fingering, gravity segregation, and reservoir
heterogeneity in miscible displacements in vertical cross sections. SPE Advanced Technology Series 1 (1):
39 46.
Chen, C.-Y., and Meiburg, E. 1998. Miscible porous media displacements in the quarter five-spot
configuration. part 2. effect of heterogeneities. Journal of Fluid Mechanics 371: 269 299.
De Wit, A. and Homsy, G. 1997. Viscous fingering in periodically heterogeneous porous media. ii.
numerical simulations. Journal of Chemical Physics 107 (22): 9619 9628.
Ferer, M. and Smith, D. 1994. Dynamics of growing interfaces from the simulation of unstable flow
in random media. Physical Review E 49 (5): 4114 4120.
Ferer, M., Stevenson, K., Bromhal, G., Gump, J., Wilder, J. and Smith D. 2006. 2-d network model
simulations of miscible two-phase flow displacements in porous media: Effects of heterogeneity and
viscosity. Physica A 367: 724.
Furtado, F. and Pereira, F. 1998. Scaling analysis for two-phase immiscible flow in heterogeneous
porous media. Computational and Applied Mathematics 17 (3): 237263.
Jensen, J. L., and Lake, L. W. 1988. Influence of sample size and permeability distribution in
heterogeneity measures. SPE Reservoir Engineering 3 (2): 629 637.
Koval, E. 1963. A mthod for predicting the performance of unstable miscible displacement in
heterogeneous media. SPE Journal 3 (2): 145154.
Quitard, M. and Whitaker, S. 1988. Two-Phase flow in Heterogeneous Porous Media: The method of
Large Scale Averaging. Transport in Porous Media 3: 357413.
Riaz, A. and Meiburg, E. 2004. Vorticity interaction mechanisms in variable-viscosity heterogeneous
miscible displacements with and without density contrast. Journal of Fluid Mechanics 517: 125.
Sajjadi, M. and Azaiez, J. 2013. Scaling and Unified Characterization of Flow Instabilities in Layered
Heterogeneous Porous Media. Physical Review E 88 (3): 033017033029.
Siddiqui, H. and Sahimi, M. 1990. Computer simulations of miscible displacement processes in
disordered porous media. Chemical Engineering Science. 45 (1): 163182.
Tan, C.T. and Homsy, G. 1992. Viscous fingering with permeability heterogeneity. Physics of Fluids
A (Fluid Dynamics) 4 (6): 1099 1101.
Tchelepi, H.A. and Orr, F.M. 1994. Interaction of Viscous fingering, Permeability Heterogeneity, and
Gravity Segregation in Three Dimensions. SPE Reservoir Engineering 9 (4): 266 271.
Warren J. and Price, H. 1961. Flow in heterogeneous porous media. Society of Petroleum Engineers
1 (3): 153169.